Are you looking to make an Instagram-able cheeseboard for a girl’s night in, family event, a viewing party for The
Are you looking to make an Instagram-able cheeseboard for a girl’s night in, family event, a viewing party for The Bachelor…or like just for you (no judgment)? Well then you’ve come to the right place, because we are some self proclaimed cheese board connoisseurs, and we’re breaking down how to make a cheeseboard that is both delicious and visually stunning.
Follow these steps and you, too, can have a perfect cheeseboard every time.
Rule of thumb, when it comes to cheeseboards, start with your biggest items and work your way towards your smallest. We like to use 3 to 4 cheeses of varying sizes and shapes. Pick from both hard and soft cheeses and cut your cheeses into different shapes. You can leave some of them as whole blocks, crumble them, cut into triangles, put a soft cheese (we love ricotta) in a bowl and drizzle it with some olive oil…the possibilities are endless. Get creative and mix it up!
*If you’re using a much smaller cheeseboard opt for just 2 cheeses and place them in multiple places on your board. The repetition will make your board look bigger and more abundant!
After cheese, comes crackers. Just like your cheeses, choose crackers that are different shapes, sizes, and colors to create variety. We love a seedy cracker, a longer, flatter cracker, and something square 🙂 When you’re placing the crackers on your board have fun arranging them: create a fan, arrange them totally straight and stacked, toss them in a pile..have fun with it!
One of the keys to creating an inviting and Instagram-able cheeseboard is having things show up more than once. Create multiple piles of the same cracker. But, if you are having an item show up more than once, make sure you arrange it in the same way to further the repetition and create cohesion in your board! For example, if the cheddar cheese is cut into triangles on part of the board, you should also have it in triangles wherever else it appears.
We’re not huge cured meat people, so we usually do two different types of meat on our cheeseboards. Again, have your meats appear more than once on the board. We love to create prosciutto roses to give a fun shape with dimension and make fans out of salami.
Now that you’re adding in many different aspects to your board and things are starting to fill up, keep in mind that you never want the same things touching each other.
Another thing to consider as your board is getting more crowded is contrast! Especially when it comes to meats which can be similar hues, make sure you’re breaking up items of the same color and tone!
Now it’s time for your pickles, figs, olives, etc. Go ham on all the fun, fancy things like cotton candy, grapes, and tasty Italian olives. Try to choose a variety of colors, shapes, and sizes to keep it visually interesting and dynamic! Cut up some of your accoutrements and leave some whole! We love to slice apples thinly, split open figs, and break up bunches of grapes and leave whole olives and pickles.
Preferably with Marcona almonds, but we also understand those are heinously overprice. Nuts are the perfect small garnish to fill in all those tiny spaces between all the other fun stuff. Simply drop handfuls in any open spaces.
So this post pretty much sums up my weekend plans. What’re you babes up to…other than eating cheese?
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What a great breakdown! Definitely going to try this soon!
Beautiful! Can’t wait to try with new techniques. I guess a Charcuterie board is all cured meats?
???? for you – a sales clerk in my tiny fishing village proudly showed me their new “Chicoutimi” boards. Chicoutimi is a city in the Canadian province of Qirbec. We now all enthusiastically call them Chicoutimi boards.
I LOVE that! How fun! Maybe we should do a how to make a Chicoutimi board 🙂
Now THAT is a cheeseboard. Looks fantastic and would certainly be a talking point – right up until everyone just dives in.
Thank you! We take our cheeseboards verrrrry seriously 🙂
Beyond stunning! I need this cheeseboard in my life!
How appetizing! and visually stunning! So inspired to design my own! Thanks for the step-by-step, Sarah.